Free 32 Cadillacs by Joe Gores Page B

thorough credit check of all prospective car buyers. If we don’t check anything out, and prorate the
     collection and repossession costs over
all
our auto contracts, it costs us
twenty
bucks a head. So we trust the dealers’ credit managers to size the person up, make a few phone calls… But
this
…” He waved an unbelieving hand. “They hit every damn Caddy dealer in the Bay Area,
every one!
”
    Giselle started to giggle. “Blue Skye Enterprises. All four accounts were in the name of—”
    “Blue Skye?”
Kearny had joined her at the coffee table to flick through the files. He looked up at Groner in amazement. “Come on, Stan,
     I know you don’t pay your bank officers very much, but when a guy waltzes in and wants to open an account called
Blue Skye
—”
    “What can I say? Apparently he looks like Omar Sharif in his
Doctor Zhivago
days, and went to women AVPs in each case. All four still swear he just
couldn’t
have been conning them.”
    “I’d like to meet this guy,” said Giselle thoughtfully.
    Kearny was scanning the files as his computer brain was assessing, assimilating, relating with the bewildering speed of close
     to forty years—he’d ridden an old single-speed bike to his first repossession—of chasing deadbeats and absconders and embezzlers
     and outright thieves. He stiffened abruptly.
    “Something?” Giselle asked with sharpened attention.
    Groner was saying, “Cal-Cit Bank is out
one-point-three-two-five million dollars,
retail.”
    Kearny was saying, “The names.”
    Giselle checked the files again. She said in measured tones, “Oh… my… God…”
    “
I need those cars back to keep my job!
I don’t care what you do to get them, how many laws you have to break, what—”
    “What it costs,” inserted Kearny smoothly.
    “I didn’t say that,” The
kvetcher
was magically transformed into the hard-nosed bank unit president again. “I can’t go over a flat rate per car of—”
    “No flat rate. Ten percent of gross value recovered for each vehicle, dealer cost, with expenses over and above—”
    “Ten percent!”
Groner clutched at his heart dramatically. “How can you even
suggest
doing that to me?” He turned to Giselle as if to display his bleeding heart. “How can he even suggest ten percent to me?
Me?
Plus expenses, yet?”
    “How about eight percent?” asked Giselle sweetly.
    Groner looked over at Kearny. He said, “I thought she was with you.”
    “So did I.” Kearny grabbed Giselle’s arm and hustled her into a corner of the room. “What’re you trying to
do
to me?”
    “Show you how it’s done.”
    She pulled free, went back across the room as Stan the Man began judiciously, “Eight percent, that doesn’t sound half—”
    “Good enough,” Giselle agreed briskly. “I agree. Eight percent wouldn’t even cover field costs, let alone factoring in DKA’s
     agency expenses—prorated office overhead, field equipment upkeep and replacement, licenses, salaries, the various insurances
     we have to—”
    “Overhead? Insurance?”
Groner had his hands up in front of him, the left one vertical, the right palm-down, bouncing against the left’s stiffened
     fingertips. “Time out! Time out! You know the bank’s policy is to pay
only
a fixed repo fee to cover that stuff, plus field time and expenses, not—”
    “Not this time,” said Giselle.
    Kearny ventured, “Twelve-point-five would be—”
    “Not nearly enough.” To Groner she said, “I don’t see us doing it for under twenty percent of gross recovery, Stan.”
    “Twenty percent?”
shrieked Groner. “Not even Christ come down from His cross to find our cars would get twenty percent! Okay,
maybe,
just maybe, twelve and a half, but…”
    Behind Groner’s back, Kearny was signaling Giselle wildly to take it. She paid him no attention whatsoever.
    “Seventeen-five-oh and a wonderful bargain, Stan.”
    He crossed his arms on his chest in a gesture of finality. “I’ll have to go to